


The Heart May Freeze (Or It Can Burn)

by jazzjo



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex is a little gayby, F/F, Post 2X06, and Maggie isn't in the best of headspaces herself, needless to say Maggie is concerned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 04:51:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8564734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: The pain will ease, if I can learn. orWhy Maggie broke both their hearts.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Maggie isn't in the best of headspaces, I think we can all recognise that. I tried to get into her head as much as I could for this, but I feel like I might be projecting a little. Honestly, I identify a little too much with both these characters.

She wouldn’t lie and say it didn’t break her heart. 

 

Somehow, Danvers had caught her by surprise. Gotten under her skin. Against her better judgement (and better angels), Maggie had let her guard down enough for Danvers to chip through that well constructed impregnable fortress that eighteen years growing up Latina and queer in Blue Springs, Nebraska had forged for her. 

 

She wasn’t the first, that was for sure. Maggie had fallen before. She had let herself go, trusting the other person completely with no abandon.

 

And she had gotten burned. 

 

With every heartbreak – every girl too straight to stick around, every woman who couldn’t reconcile Maggie's love for her job and her love for them, every family member who turned their backs or their cheeks when they found out – her walls had gotten higher and more fortified. 

 

Margaret Ellen – a white girl name for a white girl town – Sawyer took pride in her steely exterior. It was her shell, and it protected her come hell or high water. 

 

Without it, she’d have drowned a long time ago.

 

It was only because of that shell that she could take everything that life threw at her. Pick herself up after her first crush’s brother and his crew had beat her up behind the farmhouse they had Sunday school classes in. Dust herself off after beat cop after beat cop foisted her off on another officer to get rid of the token minority cadet. 

 

Put herself back together time after time she proved to be not quite enough for whoever it was she had loved with all her heart she had to give. 

 

If not for the all the times she had been someone’s first – first kiss, first girlfriend, first anything but platonic friend – and ended up ousted for some fedora-wearing, cocky boy who prided himself in turning the lesbian straight. If not for all the times she had told herself that she would be enough, that the first could also be the last, and been proven so horrendously wrong.

 

Danvers wasn’t like so many of those girls. She knew – however new and terrifying the revelation was – and she was as certain as she would ever be. Uncomfortable, certainly, but not uncertain. Alexandra Danvers was a woman of science, after all, and all her data pointed to the same conclusion, no matter how obscured it had been at the beginning that the hypothesis had never been formed or postulated. 

 

Maggie wouldn’t lie and say she hadn’t kissed back. 

 

The smooth tug that had spun her back, the soft, tentative contact and soft burst of air of a sigh ghosting over her top lip. 

 

The telltale notes of saltwater and a distinct lack of alcohol’s bite.

 

The scent that enveloped Maggie, soft and warm with an edge, but so, so, her.

 

How could she not?

 

But she knew better. She knew she wanted more. More than one night stands and three month flings. More than “we had a good run” and “it’s not you, it’s me”. 

 

More than “I wanted something more than you”. 

 

She was done being someone’s first, or their in-between. What Maggie would give to be someone’s last. 

 

_Alex’s_ last. 

 

She wouldn’t lie and say that she hadn’t considered just going with it. That she hadn’t thought for a split second not to pull away.  


Not to break both their hearts. 

 

But she couldn’t warrant the risk of burning down a building that had barely put its wooden scaffolding up. She would be too much, too fast, for Alex. Alex, who had to find herself and finally learn that sometimes it was more than okay to put herself first. Alex, who had to find it in herself to understand that she could be everything someone wanted, and everything she herself wanted. Alex, who had to learn that she was enough on her own. 

 

Alex who deserved more than hard-headed, insensitive, work-obsessed, borderline sociopathic Maggie Sawyer.

 

Maggie knew she had ways to go before she could trust herself in a relationship as committed as one she craved. Maggie knew, above all else, how to not tarnish something shiny and new, how to stay away from soft pure gold rather than holding it too tight in her hands. 

 

But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. 

 

She didn’t have to see the look in Alex’s eyes as she walked away. The hitch in her voice as she bade her farewell, the quiver in her usually squared shoulders as she turned on her heel. Alex Danvers carried her heartbreak on those shoulders. 

 

Maggie knew they would both pull their masks back on, shove their feelings into shoeboxes hidden at the very furthest corner under their bed, pushed as far against the wall as they would go. They would, if they both played it right, go back to jokes and almost-flirting, shoulders brushing while they tried to outsmart the other. They would build some semblance of what they once had out of the ashes Maggie had left them as when she tried to keep them both from getting burned. 

 

That grin that she had flashed – a half-quirked, slanted, chagrined thing – had been one of the most painful gestures she had made in a while. It had taken all of her resolve to not crumble as she tried to convince them both that being friends would be enough. 

 

She hadn’t been lying. She would always, always be there for Alex. After everything she had been through, and everything Alex had been through, Maggie couldn’t bear the thought of Alex going through the journey all alone. 

 

Alex carried a heavy sort of sadness in her eyes, the sort that belied some sort of childhood trauma or a deeply scarring formative event. It was a weight Maggie recognised, and a weight that terrified her all the same. Maggie had a saviour complex streak a mile wide. Almost every one of her girlfriends was testament to that – alien refugees who spoke scores of foreign languages but not a lick of English and struggled to navigate their new realities, timid pastor’s daughters who shook like leaves every time they considered for a moment that they were different than what their parents and church expected them to be. 

 

But people who were lost lashed out sharper than anyone else. 

 

Years of that had chipped away at Maggie. Chipped away at her self-worth and sanity, chipped away at her ability to admit that she needed help at times as well. 

 

It had left her exhausted. 

 

While everything was shiny and new, rose-coloured blinders still on, this world-weary exhaustion was often easily missed. How could Alex really know what she was getting into? 

 

Alex wanted the Maggie who was comfortable in her own skin. Her bearing steadfast and her swagger self-assured, a warm hand on the small of her back ready to steady her if she stumbled. 

 

How could she be sure that Alex would still want Maggie – the exhausted, shaky, confused truth of Maggie – when she could be that steady force for herself? 

 

Alex was light, a freshly filled oil lamp on a doorstep. Maggie was the security of a pitcher of water that could put out flames if they got out of control, but she was also a leaky faucet. She might extinguish that lamp before it could give off enough light to fill its space. 

 

Until she figured out how to put herself back into a better headspace, she had no place being Alex’s anything, let alone her last like she desperately wanted. 


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing she did when she got home was hold Jamie. Jamie, to her six year old merit, said nothing as she wrapped her skinny arms around Maggie’s neck and felt the hot tears seep through the soft cotton of her nightshirt. 

 

“Te quiero, Jamie,” Maggie murmured against her daughter’s temple, “I love you so much.”

 

Burrowing her nose deeper into Maggie’s hair, Jamie whispered against her mother’s ear, “I love you, Mama.”

 

Maggie swung her daughter up in her arms, making sloppy turns through their corridor as she swept Jamie back towards her room. The little girl giggled, unbridled spurts of air against Maggie’s earlobe as she revelled in her daughter’s joy. 

 

This, this was her light. 

 

As Maggie set a giggling Jamie down on her twin bed, Jamie tugged on her mother’s hair softly, her face immediately setting into a somber expression. 

 

“Someone made you sad, Mama.”

 

It was a statement, not a question, matter-of-fact as it could be. Maggie’s lips pulled into a thin smile, revealing the same dimples that adorned Jamie’s face.

 

“Sadness is a part of life, cariño,” Maggie placed a soft kiss on Jamie’s forehead, tucking her in under the cotton sheets, “It will pass.”

 

“Mama, are you lonely?” Jamie probed liltingly, her head tilted as she regarded Maggie, “Miss Novacek says its good that I’m making friends with one of the new kids, so Laila won’t be lonely.”

 

Maggie shook her head, cradling her daughter’s cheek in the palm of her hand. 

 

“I’ve got you, mija, why would I be lonely?” Maggie assured. She lived for the brilliant smile that blossomed over Jamie’s face at the revelation. 

 

Jamie came first, she always did. For all the reckless decisions and poor judgements that Maggie had ever made in her life, Jamie was never the mistake. Her relationships may not have lasted because she spent so much of her effort of keeping her work, dating and her daughter separate that she could only ever give part of herself to any of them.

 

Except Jamie, of course. Jamie got all of Maggie that she had to give. 

 

“Do you make friends with the new kids, Mama?” Jamie’s voice broke through her musings.

 

Maggie nearly laughed out loud – a brittle, broken laugh too harsh for Jamie to hear – but pushed the bubbling discomfort down as she opened her mouth to reply lightly, “Of course! We can’t have people feeling like they don’t belong, can we?”

 

Placing one more kiss on Jamie’s cheek, Maggie hugged her daughter once more before she dimmed the lamp next to her bed. The homemade galaxy stencil lampshade cast soft hazy outlines of the milky way across Jamie’s ceiling. 

 

“You’d best be getting to sleep, mija, or you won't be awake enough to play with Laila tomorrow,” Maggie rose from her crouch over Jamie’s bed, her hand brushing over her daughter’s curls as she turned to leave, “Buenas noches, Jamie.”

 

“Buenas noches, Mama,” Jamie sleepily muttered as she huddled into her pillow. 

 

Maggie shut the door to Jamie’s room behind her silently, her bare feet padding down the hallway and straight to the fridge. Wrenching it open, her hand stilled over the half-empty bottle of rosé before moving instead to grab a can of soda water out of the fridge. 

 

Popping the tab, Maggie sighed as she felt the first gulp of liquid burn its way down her throat.

 

If there was one lesson she wasn’t looking forward to teaching her daughter, it was that the right thing sure hurt like a bitch sometimes. 

 

But Maggie would be lying if she didn’t admit that Jamie played a big part in the decision she had made. Of course she did. Ever since Jamie came into her life, Maggie had no qualms about the fact that her very existence had irrevocably changed the decisions that Maggie would be making about her life. 

 

Jamie had been her best six years so far, and Maggie wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

 

She had been teetering on the edge of introducing her most recent ex-girlfriend – Lucia, her name was, all blonde hair and stunning smile and a ball of journalistic brilliance – to Jamie. In the past eight relationships she’d had in six years, it was the only one that had even come close. 

 

But it had ended. 

 

Thank goodness it had ended before the fact. It had taken her more than a year to get to the point of considering the notion, and it had come crashing down in less than a day. 

 

She had headed to Lucia’s apartment during her lunch hour, the additional key on her key ring no longer fitting into the lock on the front door. That evening when she returned home to her own apartment, there was a slim envelope taped onto the front door containing a letter on a thin sheet of yellow legal pad and the additional toothbrush that had taken up residence in Lucia’s apartment. 

 

Not that she had been able to stay over much, if at all. 

 

That had been part of the end. 

 

Lucia had called her detached, hardheaded and obsessed with work. Lucia had torn apart parts of Maggie’s personality she had considered integral to who she was. Lucia had forced her to reconsider the kind of mother she was being for Jamie. 

 

If an adult who shared some of the most intimate parts of her life thought she was detached and work-obsessed, what must a six year old think?

 

Frankly, despite the hurt Maggie was glad it ended. And she was glad, despite the hurt, that she had chosen to step away rather than to start something new with Alex.

 

Even though she really, _really_ , liked Alex. 

 

Maybe even loved her. 

 

And that terrified her. It gave her cause to jump in too deep, to get too invested and consider risky courses of action before she could assess all risks. Those emotions would compromise her. Compromise them — Jamie and her, that is. 

 

_If something really belongs to you, mija,_ her Mama used to say, _let it go and it will come back to you._

 

Maggie could only hope that by some mercy of the multiverse that Alex Danvers would find her way back to her somehow, at a point where she could be more sure that the futures she wanted with both Alex and Jamie could be reconciled with each other without either of them getting hurt. When she could figure out why anyone she had ever considered certain enough to bring home to meet Jamie could think her impossible to be with. Could think she was incapable of love. 

 

She had to be better before she could take her chances with Alex. For Alex and Jamie both. 


End file.
